Phrase used to say someone is dead or has deceased. Term is derived from when suicides were common by a person preparing to hang themself, and used a bucket to stand on, and then kicked the bucket when suicide was desired.

Ole' Charlie kicked the bucket today, we better prepare for his funeral.

The actual origin of the term is from England, and began in the later middle ages. A corpse would be laid out, and a bucket of holy water placed at its feet. Visitors could then sprinkle the deceased with Holy Water. Other explanations (suicide, execution) came later to explain an idiom, of which the origin of the term had ceased, mainly as a result of the English reformation.

"To Kick the Bucket" is explained by Bishop Abbot Horne in 1949, in his booklet "Relics of Popery" Catholic Truth Society. He adds "Many other explanations of this saying have been given by persons who are unaquainted with Catholic Custom"

Pigs to be slaughtered are bled, that is the blood is drained from the body. One way this is accomplished is to hang the pig upside down from a bar (by one foot) that used to be known as a "buchet," a French word for it. The pig's throat was cut or opened with a sharp spike, and it would rapidly be bled. In its death throes, it would always kick the buchet.